Governor Eddie Calvo on Friday vetoed legislation that would have raised from 18 to 21 Guam’s minimum age for buying tobacco products, according to a Pacific Daily News story.
Bill 141-33 would have made 21 the legal age for vaping too.
In his veto letter, Calvo said the government was not a nanny and that island lawmakers didn’t have the right to tell Guam residents old enough to serve in the military, vote, marry and have children that they couldn’t buy a pack of cigarettes.
“As adults, we each have the right to make our own individual life choices, even if that choice is bad for our health,” Calvo wrote. “And it’s our personal responsibility to live with whatever choice we ultimately make.”
The Guam Legislature passed the measure on a 9-6 vote on June 17. Ten votes are necessary to override a veto.
Had Calvo signed the measure, Guam would have joined Hawaii and California as places in the US that have made 21 the legal age for tobacco.
The author of Guam’s bill, Vice Speaker Benjamin Cruz, has said his measure is intended to save lives.
Cruz said in a press release on Friday that Calvo’s veto gave big tobacco companies ‘a license to keep on killing’.
‘Cigarettes turn choice into a lifelong addiction funded by taxpayers – many of whom never smoked a day in their lives,’ Cruz said. ‘When it costs 40 times more to treat a smoker than a non-smoker, it isn’t about choice. It’s about saving lives, saving dollars, and saving valuable public resources.
“In the days and weeks ahead, I pray we find a 10th vote. So many lives are depending on it.”
Calvo, in his veto letter, said that while the bill was well-intentioned, its policy was ‘ultimately vague and unenforceable’.
He said the health risks of tobacco and smoking were real and not up for debate; but the bill was a ‘willful intrusion into the personal lives and choices of our citizens’.